whispered.
Abruptly, shaken by the word, Medeia was silent. She
raised
her hands to her face, then suddenly crossed to the
slave and embraced her.
I understood, squinting at the two, that the word had
changed her.
I gradually made out why. She’d all at once remembered what it was to be a child: the inexplicable safety, the sense of sure salvation adults forget. A fact of
reality,
like a house, three sheep in a pasture. In the face of
what she knew
she had no choice but acceptance, weeping like a child
again.
For all her knowledge of mingled evil and good in the
world,
it seemed to her (mysterious, baffling) that she held in
her arms
the perishable husk of a truth still pure and
imperishable,
eternal as Dionysos drinking and singing in the grave. “Now, now,” the old woman whimpered, weeping.
“Now, now, my lady,
no need for sorrow. All will be well. Have faith!”
“I know,”
Medeia said, and struggled to believe it for a moment
longer.
She drew away, forced a smile, and — seeing that the
slave
trembled with weakness — led Agapetlka to a cushioned
bench
with a view of the darkened garden, and helped her
down on it.
She frowned, studying the old woman, alarmed by her
gasps,
the trembling of the dry, gray hands. “All you say is
true,” she said.
“I have a kind of proof, in fact—” She paused; then,
softly:
“I’ll show it to you.” Swift, majestic, Medeia was gone from the room. In a moment she was back, carrying
an object wrapped
in skins. She laid it on the carved bench by the
window, moved
the tall lamps close to Agapetika’s chair, and, taking
the package
in her hands again, she carefully unwrapped it. A
gleam of gold,
and Agapetika gasped anew. And then it was undone, with one quick toss unfurled like a dazzling, sunlit flag. “ ’For you,’ he told me,” Medeia said, “ ‘because it was
won
by both of us. No other woman and no other man could have done it — though only Argus, child of
Athena, could weave
the fleece we two brought home. Make a gown of the
cloth, my queen.
A symbol, fit for a goddess, of Jason’s love.’ —Jason of the golden tongue, they call him.” She brooded.
“And yet I was moved.”
We looked — the old woman, Medeia, and I — at the
cloth woven
from the golden fleece. It was smooth as silk to the
touch, and yet
crowded with figures — peacocks, parrots, turrets and
towers,
farmers ploughing their sloping fields under city walls, and, nearby, soldiers, ladies and lords on splendid
barges,
all interlocked with loveknots and (curious lace)
sharp bones.
The scenes kept changing, like tricks of light, and our
three heads
bent close, almost touching. We looked so hard that our
eyes crimped
like the eyes of a man who’s stared for a minute at the
sun. Old roads
drew us mysteriously inward, plunging into forests so
thick
no thread of light broke through where the groaning
limbs interlocked.
We came to a clearing, a wide black river tumbling,
roaring
at our feet, and across it waterfalls crashed out of
terrible heights,
gray cliffs that went up like a falling man’s grasp,
through brooding clouds;
and the falls, striking, sent out such shocks that the
ground where we stood
shivered like the outstretched wing of a soaring hawk.
The path
led on — wound inward to a cave like the nose in an
ancient skull,
on the far side of the torrent. But the bridge was
gone. We were stopped.
Strain as I might, my eyes could pierce no further
through
the deceiving mists of the cloth.
Then, stranger still, I thought,
I heard faint whispers stirring, rising from the tapestry: the threads of the cloth, it seemed to me, were singing.
They sang:
Argus wove me, craftily wrought my warp and woof with magic more than Medeia makes, and misery more, and mystery more. And more than he meant I melt in me and wider than Argus’ wisdom wrought I work my
wyrds,
my secret words. For wealth and weal he wove in the
warp
(ingenious antic engineer by his ancient art!) but bonefire, bane, and burning blood he buried in the
woof,
buried in the woof as the bobbin drove; for his dark
brains burned,
and little his lore of the lower lusts that lurk in love, lurked in his love for the lady and lord he labored for. (Woe lay within him when Argus wrought my warp
and woof,
the warp and woof of my web so wisely, wickedly
wrought.)
Argus wove me, weary old Argus, weary old Argus
who wished them well.
I stared at Medeia. She’d heard some other song,
perhaps.
Or each of us heard what he knew. For the fat old
woman wept
and covered her face with her gray hands, shaking in
sorrow.
The room went dark. I reached out suddenly to touch
the two women,
hold them a moment longer and warn Medeia. I’d
watched
too long as the timid outsider, even as I did in my
own life,
thirty centuries hence. “Medeia!” I called. No answer. Only the moan of the universe turning on its weary
wheels.
My hands closed on nothing. She was a dream.
“Medeia,”
I whispered. Useless. The long sigh of the galaxies slowly exhaling, dimming, drifting through darkness.
Dreams.
5
The great hall gleamed. Koprophoros spoke, the
dark-eyed king
with the womanish voice, great rolls of abdomens and
chins.
The ruby glowed on his forehead like blood on fire,
and the gold
of his turban, his robes, his scimitar, was bright as the
sun.
The meal had been carried away long since, the
jugglers returned
to their rooms to count their coins. The slaves moved
silently
from table to table, pouring wine. Old Kreon sat with his chin resting in his hands, observing carefully. His beloved slave, Ipnolebes, standing beside him,
watched
with eyes like dagger holes, his arms folded. He seemed carved out of weathered rock. Jason gazed at the
table—
forehead resting on his hand, his wide shoulders low-listening thoughtfully, biding his time. Could it be
because
I knew the story — children murdered, Corinth in
flames—
that the game seemed to me suddenly ominous, a
conflict of demons?
Whatever the reason, I felt cold wind run down my
spine.
The fat man, harmless as he seemed, comically
clowning, filled me
with superstitious alarm.